Page:Parsons How to Know the Ferns 7th ed.djvu/218

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GROUP VI

FERTILE AND STERILE FRONDS LEAF-LIKE
AND USUALLY SIMILAR; FRUIT-DOTS ROUND

48. COMMON POLYPODY. SNAKE FERN

Polypodium vulgare

Almost throughout North America, on rocks. A few inches to more than a foot high.

Polypody Fronds.—Oblong, smooth, somewhat leathery, cut into narrowly oblong, usually obtuse divisions which almost reach the rachis; fruit-dots large, round, half-way between the midrib and margin; indusium, none.


Strangely enough, the Polypody, one of our most abundant and ubiquitous ferns, is not rightly named, if it is noticed at all, by nine out of ten people who come across it in the woods or along the roadside. Yet the plant has a charm peculiarly its own, a charm arising partly from its vigor, from the freshness of its youth and the endurance of its old age, partly from its odd outlines, and partly from its usual environment, which

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